Apple II madness!

August 29, 2006 12:17 PM

1,100 Apple II games you can play online. If you are too overwhelmed by your memories to know what to play, some playable classics: Oregon Trail*, Ultima IV*, Archon*, Captain Goodnight and the Islands of Fear*, Drol*, Wings of Fury*, Choplifter *, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?* and Taipan*. Or you can play the first game mod in history: Castle Smurfenstein, a modification of the 1983 original Castle Wolfenstein. What did I miss? [Young whippersnappers can click the asterisks to find out why the game was important. Use the left and right alt keys for joystick buttons, the other instructions are on the site. Emulator only works with IE, sorry. See also this.]
posted by blahblahblah (98 comments total)

Doesn't work on a Mac -- ha!
posted by mazola at 12:19 PM on August 29, 2006

rescue raiders, of course. man, that was my fav. game for years. it's kinda tough to play it now without my old ch joystick.
posted by mrballistic at 12:20 PM on August 29, 2006

doesn't like my firefox, but works in IE.
posted by leotrotsky at 12:24 PM on August 29, 2006

And of course, Oregon Trail.
posted by mrbill at 12:26 PM on August 29, 2006

Could someone with a Windows machine tell me whether or not the "Conan" game listed is "Conan:Halls of Volta"? I've had the sweetest jones for that game for the past year and this would really make my week.
posted by lekvar at 12:27 PM on August 29, 2006

cool, but boo: (Note: Requires Internet Explorer and Windows)
posted by mcstayinskool at 12:28 PM on August 29, 2006

*reads teeny tiny print*

*blushes*
posted by leotrotsky at 12:28 PM on August 29, 2006

Holy Cats! Ruskki Duck!
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:29 PM on August 29, 2006

Sweet mother of chemistry.... Dungeon Master..... there goes any hopes for a productive afternoon!
posted by Dr-Baa at 12:35 PM on August 29, 2006

Ah, Choplifter...one of the first games I was truly bad at.
posted by OmieWise at 12:36 PM on August 29, 2006

Oh, hey, I have a great idea. Let's take a whole bunch of classic APPLE games, and then make them playable again ... but only on WINDOWS. Nice. Good times, though.
posted by robhuddles at 12:37 PM on August 29, 2006

Getting to play Oregon Trail again is worth using IE!
posted by leesh at 12:39 PM on August 29, 2006

Heh. I've played three of these games in the last month.
posted by danb at 12:40 PM on August 29, 2006

What did I miss?

Hard Hat Harry.
posted by loquacious at 12:41 PM on August 29, 2006

Wow, now I can play Balance of Power again. The most boring, pointless game on the planet.
posted by parmanparman at 12:43 PM on August 29, 2006

Aw, Oregon Trail totally breaks at disk 2.
posted by leesh at 12:48 PM on August 29, 2006

Apple II games that can only be played on a Windows box?

The End Times™ are here folks, strap yourselves in, it's gonna be a rough, rough ride.

Next up: Atari 800 games that can only be played on a Timex Sinclair.
posted by dbiedny at 12:53 PM on August 29, 2006

Balance of Power was the shit, man! I used to play it almost every day. Great multiplayer games are games where they backstabbing jerk (==me) usually wins.
posted by n9 at 12:53 PM on August 29, 2006

I can't view the games from this here computer, but does the Captain Goodnight game come with the super secret decoder wheel that was used for copy protection?

And if they have Sabotage, turn guided shells on and kiss your entire afternoon goodbye.
posted by Spatch at 12:54 PM on August 29, 2006

Does Oregon Trail get it on with you?
posted by kableh at 12:58 PM on August 29, 2006

Oregon Trail! Yay!
posted by dame at 12:59 PM on August 29, 2006

Not only do they have Archon it's actually the same cracked version I had, awesome. I wonder if the same house phone number is still active? :)
posted by Mitheral at 1:07 PM on August 29, 2006

My daughter keeps breaking her legs.

Damn you Oregon Trail.
posted by bardic at 1:10 PM on August 29, 2006

Following in mrbill's footsteps, I'd like to link to Oregon Trail.
posted by NationalKato at 1:11 PM on August 29, 2006

can someone link to a mac-friendly version of Oregon Trail? This post has me jonesing to ford some rivers.
posted by tylermoody at 1:18 PM on August 29, 2006

Forgot Below the Root.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:22 PM on August 29, 2006

Wow, now I can play Balance of Power again. The most boring, pointless game on the planet.

Balance of Power was the shit, man!

I was a QA play-tester on that game when they were porting to other platforms (notably Amiga). It was a great idea, but playing it hour after hour for weeks at a time drained whatever interest I had in it right out.

The guy who designed the game had another one that never saw the light of day which I also play-tested in its beta stage, some of the elements of which are reminiscent of what would become "Civilization".
posted by briank at 1:24 PM on August 29, 2006

God I lost many hours to Archon in the day. But why isnt this available on the Mac? I mean, isn't that just the most ridiculous thing ever?
posted by Dantien at 1:24 PM on August 29, 2006

What did I miss?

When I was in Grade 2 and was done with the Phonics books I rather liked Karateka, Alpine Encounter, Rescue Raiders and Mario Bros.

Oh, and awesome post. Goodbye day, and maybe week.
posted by jimmythefish at 1:26 PM on August 29, 2006

I could have sworn that the first time I read the post, Oregon Trail wasn't listed...
posted by mrbill at 1:35 PM on August 29, 2006

But where is Odell Lake?
posted by kowalski at 1:38 PM on August 29, 2006

Mmmmm.... Karateka. Prince of Persia, but further east and with better music.

The irony of all this relying on a PC is indeed ridiculous, in a salt-in-a-wound sort of way.
posted by j-dub at 1:38 PM on August 29, 2006

Looks like Halls of Volta, but fails after the intro screen :(
posted by Liosliath at 1:42 PM on August 29, 2006

Aww kids, I'm sure the multiplatform santa is just a couple clicks away.
posted by PissOnYourParade at 1:44 PM on August 29, 2006

Hella nice, Oregon Trail. (not what you think)
posted by o2b at 1:45 PM on August 29, 2006

Is there a win32 binary of the emulator so I can play locally? I'll second the awesomeness of rescue raiders too.
posted by damn dirty ape at 1:50 PM on August 29, 2006

Funny, my employer's nanny software block access to the gaming info sites, but I can play the games.
posted by raedyn at 1:54 PM on August 29, 2006

Yay! I made it to Oregon!

Anyone remember a game with a deserted island and pirates who capture you? What was that one called?
posted by cmyk at 1:54 PM on August 29, 2006

Loading up Tass Times In Tone Town again has made my day. Thanks!
posted by GeekAnimator at 1:54 PM on August 29, 2006

Obligatory meta-self-link: if you are inclined you can play "Suicide!" (incorrectly listed as "Suicide"), which only has three things going for it:

1. It was the first arcade-type game with punctuation in its title.
2. I wrote the bulk of it when I was 13.
3. The splat sounds when the guys hit the ground are pretty good.

posted by plinth at 1:54 PM on August 29, 2006 [1 favorite]

Ah, Oregon Trail in BASIC. Now yer talkin'.
posted by JanetLand at 1:57 PM on August 29, 2006

yeah, there are mac emulators...just download the file if you are really jonesing:

Here is one
posted by das_2099 at 1:57 PM on August 29, 2006

What's going on with the deja-vu in this thread?
posted by NationalKato at 1:57 PM on August 29, 2006

[yay]
posted by absalom at 2:01 PM on August 29, 2006

My favorite part: start up Micro League Baseball and on the title screen you get the note "Kracked by Hot Rod. Distributed by The Racketeers. Kracked on 09/15/84." Good work, Hot Rod!
posted by rogue haggis landing at 2:01 PM on August 29, 2006

Alright, so the browser-based part doesn't work in anything but IE on Windows, but that's okay. At the bottom of every page are links to the disk images! Use those in something like OSXII for the Mac, or xapple2 for various other Unices. You Windows people might want to nab a copy of AppleWin to play the games offline.
posted by majick at 2:03 PM on August 29, 2006 [1 favorite]

Oh, Thexder! Yippee!
posted by jimmythefish at 2:03 PM on August 29, 2006

What's going on with the deja-vu in this thread?

Simple. No one reads the posts down here.
posted by bob sarabia at 2:05 PM on August 29, 2006

Looks like Halls of Volta, but fails after the intro screen :(

<vader>NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!</vader>
posted by lekvar at 2:08 PM on August 29, 2006

Oh man... I really wanted to play Choplifter.
Won't work on my Mac -all I see is a Lego brick.
posted by squidfartz at 2:16 PM on August 29, 2006

but did anyone link to ingrown nail (on the oregon trail)?
posted by snofoam at 2:23 PM on August 29, 2006

Okay, because I only do full service FPPs, for those people who can't play online:

If you have a Mac: You can use Virtual ][ (shareware)
If you have a PC, but are having trouble using the site: You can use Apple Win (GPL)

ROMs are available from the Virtual Apple site, just scroll to the bottom of each game page.

And yes, Below the Root and Rescue Raiders are incredible! Also great (I didn't list it because it didn't run in the browser) is Earth Orbit Stations -- make sure to download it if you get an emulator.
posted by blahblahblah at 2:24 PM on August 29, 2006 [1 favorite]

or what majick said...
posted by blahblahblah at 2:26 PM on August 29, 2006

Shit. There goes my whole night. Where's that foam donut?
posted by scblackman at 2:44 PM on August 29, 2006

Dammit, dammit, dammit. I want so badly to play Fool's Errand and 3 in 3 again, but the guy who wrote them only has them up on the web in a format that plays in classic mode. I don't even *have* classic mode anymore.

Phooey.
posted by tzikeh at 2:56 PM on August 29, 2006

Bolo !
posted by stbalbach at 3:03 PM on August 29, 2006

I only mention that this post is a bit of a double because y'all forgot I/O Silver, damnit.
posted by Space Coyote at 3:03 PM on August 29, 2006

Crap,old link went bad.

here.
posted by Space Coyote at 3:06 PM on August 29, 2006

Wow, thanks! I haven't even thought about some of these games since I last played them in the 80s, yet I remember some bits so vividly. I'm completely tripping out over Captain Goodnight...
posted by Onanist at 3:22 PM on August 29, 2006

tzikeh, look into BasiliskII.... it's a very good emulator of 68K Macs. Runs like a dream on PCs, and I'm pretty sure it runs well (albeit somewhat slower) on the Mac.
posted by Malor at 3:33 PM on August 29, 2006

Wow, thanks! I haven't even thought about some of these games since I last played them in the 80s, yet I remember some bits so vividly. I'm completely tripping out over Captain Goodnight...

Yeah, that is what freaked me out the most. I started up Rescue Raiders and immediately the correct strategy came to mind. I also realized I remembered the location of all of the towns in Ultima IV. That scares me...
posted by blahblahblah at 3:34 PM on August 29, 2006

Wow, this hasn't been on Metafilter before? Virtualapple's been around forever!
posted by thirteenkiller at 3:47 PM on August 29, 2006

It has been on MeFi but usually with an external emulator, this is the first I've seen where you just surf, click and play (and where the speeds are set correctly).
posted by stbalbach at 3:49 PM on August 29, 2006

Firebird. The one where you tried to 'catch' people jumping out of windows.

Now that was a game. In the kind of way "if I ever wrote a game and it was this bad I should shoot myself" way.
posted by rough ashlar at 3:51 PM on August 29, 2006

What's amazing to me is that these games that are four floppies worth of data are more fun than modern games that span four cd's worth of data. How is that?
posted by peeedro at 4:11 PM on August 29, 2006

After 12 years I finally beat Oregon Trail. It helps to not have the session trucated to the length of a study hall.

And now I'm in the Top Ten! Woooo!
posted by yeti at 4:12 PM on August 29, 2006

blahblahblah writes "I also realized I remembered the location of all of the towns in Ultima IV. That scares me..."

Bah. Ultima IV is, considering its technological limitations, pretty much a perfect game. It's an open-ended quest that provides countless hours of fun; while the later Ultima games had better stories and real dialogue and intricate graphics and the bar was not likely to say "BAR" in big letters, none of them has given me a tenth as many enjoyable hours playing as Ultima IV. It's simple, but wonderful fun with what it's got.
posted by graymouser at 4:23 PM on August 29, 2006 [1 favorite]

Okay, first...

Firefox : IE :: Flying in the concord : banging your head against a rock until you hallucinate that you've travelled somewhere pretty. But I'm sucking it up for this.

Secondly, and I'm willing to admit that this is probably because I'm a moron, but Carmen Sandiego has been giving me the message to insert the second disc when the intro starts for, like, the last fifteen minutes now, with no intro. When I try to "insert" the second "disc" it gives me an error message, so I do a run command to bring me back to the original screen.

All I want is to play the game, how do I get past the Apple II obscurity that I didn't grow up with?
posted by Navelgazer at 4:25 PM on August 29, 2006

And when I said "obscurity" I of course meant intricacies.
posted by Navelgazer at 4:30 PM on August 29, 2006

No Reader Rabbit :-(

And are there some virtually copy-protected games we can use the virtual copy of Copy II Plus on?
posted by jfuller at 4:51 PM on August 29, 2006

Oh, lord, Wings Of Fury! I loved that game. Torpedo runs at a destroyer with the anti-aircraft fire splashing in the water all around you. . .and I feel kind of guilty about it now, but to my ten-year-old self, the tiny little stick figures being flung in the air by your machine guns was almost unaccountably hilarious.
posted by EarBucket at 4:56 PM on August 29, 2006

Oh, and Sherlock Holmes--Another Bow. I rented it when I was a kid, loved it but didn't get to finish it, returned it after a week and could never find it again. Now I get to play all the way through! Thanks, blahblahblah!
posted by EarBucket at 4:59 PM on August 29, 2006

Oh heavens...Ultima IV...now i've got to go out and find some mandrake and deadly nightshade to be able to cast some wicked spell I can't remember the other reagents for...
posted by rhythim at 5:17 PM on August 29, 2006 [1 favorite]

graymouser and rhythim have lost an eighth.
posted by bardic at 5:37 PM on August 29, 2006 [1 favorite]

holy cow. This site is complete .. even the unpopular games that I for some reason loved like Pooyan and Aztec. I can even play Karateka now, which I was never able to do on my old //c. Awesome post blahblahblah!
posted by rks404 at 5:43 PM on August 29, 2006

Cool site, but lack of Spellevator dampens Kwinean nostalgia.
posted by Kwine at 5:54 PM on August 29, 2006

OM OM OM
posted by belling at 6:21 PM on August 29, 2006

oh! so much joy!

anyone know a way to port the emulator to a emate newton platform?

googling bring up too many site for either, but not a site for apple II on newton.

that would bring my ultima/taipan needs to a happy place!
posted by jeribus at 6:22 PM on August 29, 2006

no Autoduel :(
posted by Afroblanco at 6:48 PM on August 29, 2006

Yes, Autoduel.
posted by blahblahblah at 6:54 PM on August 29, 2006

also, what about King of Santa Paravia? I wanna be a Marquis, yo.

Marquis.
posted by Afroblanco at 6:54 PM on August 29, 2006

ho-lee-shit! Thanks blahblahblah! I was (mistakenly) looking at IIGs games. And they also have Santa Paravia! I wonder if it still has that bug where it throws an overflow error if you have grow too many steres of wheat.
posted by Afroblanco at 6:57 PM on August 29, 2006

Text adventure fans should take a crack at Pinsky's Mindwheel.
posted by oraknabo at 6:57 PM on August 29, 2006

Holy shit, Drol! That game was HOURS of mindless fun.
posted by 40 Watt at 7:21 PM on August 29, 2006

Bah! FUCKFACE has died.
posted by Hicksu at 9:07 PM on August 29, 2006 [1 favorite]

graymouser and rhythim may have lost an eighth, but they know their shit.

Ultima IV is the best gaem evar!

I oughtta know, look at my profile.
-==(UDIC)==-
posted by djeo at 9:22 PM on August 29, 2006

seadragon. Seadragon! SEADRAGON!!!! (early voice synth, if I recall correctly)
posted by haricotvert at 9:56 PM on August 29, 2006

Am I the only one not to be bored witless by Taipan?
posted by patricio at 4:39 AM on August 30, 2006

Does anyone remember the game (it may have been for the early Macs, not Apples) where you're exploring a dark castle in platformer style, and you have to throw rocks at bats? I can see it in my head, but I can't remember the name for the life of me.
posted by klangklangston at 6:57 AM on August 30, 2006

I, also, found Taipan tedious when I played it at school 20 years ago.

You could make it a lot more tedious by cheating, though. Change a few BASIC variables and you could edit your ship's specs. Hold space, money, crew... and number of guns.

Number of enemies in combat was, as I recall, a function of the number of guns on your ship. So your man o' war with 65536 guns would invariably face some hilarious number of pirates, and each combat turn would then last until proton decay destroyed the universe.
posted by dansdata at 7:03 AM on August 30, 2006

"From the animals you shot, you got 1921 pounds of meat. However, you were only able to carry 100 pounds back to your wagon."

Seriously, still disappointing. More than one trip?

Also, small flashback that I had. On the tombstone that you can look at on this particular game, it says somethings like "Cheez and peporoni".

There was a commercial at the time for Tombstone pizza where they would say "what do you want on your tombstone?"

We would always do this too, I love how it got saved and preserved in this version. Oh to be five again.
posted by Sreiny at 9:08 AM on August 30, 2006

Hm. Does anyone remember the name of that Apple //e game where you ran a farm in a kingdom, planned which crops each year to plant, bought more land, and slowly raised yourself from lowly farmer to king?

Arg! That's killing me!
posted by eatdonuts at 9:46 AM on August 30, 2006

Does anyone remember the game (it may have been for the early Macs, not Apples) where you're exploring a dark castle in platformer style, and you have to throw rocks at bats?

You remember it better than you think.
posted by oraknabo at 10:41 AM on August 30, 2006

OREGON TRAIL!!!!!

ZANY GOLF!!!!!! alas, with this one, it's hard to 'release' the ball. sigh.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 10:55 AM on August 30, 2006

Djeo? No shit!

DragonSpawn
-==UDIC==-

Also Kabul Spy! Finally - after all these years I will understand what the hell it was on about and why there werethe first few rooms from collosal cave in the middle of it.
posted by Sparx at 1:14 PM on August 30, 2006

My god. It's full of stars....

Thanks for posting this, blah.
posted by Inkslinger at 3:31 PM on August 30, 2006

Now that this has won, I can say it:
Dammit, I would have made this post in December if it wasn't down then!
posted by kyleg at 7:56 PM on August 30, 2006

The Ultima Dragons are a large virtual club founded in 1992 on Prodigy who have since moved to the Internet due to Prodigy's outrageous rate structure. The club is dedicated to helping others with their Ultima questions, discussing Ultima, and, most obviously, sharing information and creative exploits
posted by lazaruslong at 2:22 AM on September 2, 2006